Reclaiming Our Legacy of Harmony in Times of Great Change

Bridesmaid Odanata Dragonfly

Source: Pixamio/Pixabay

This is my story: The collective unconscious contains elements which, if made conscious, could help us adapt, assuring us of short-term survival. Dragonflies bring me messages about these elements. If I tell my story well, you will understand that my story is your story, the same story that is and has always been the story of life. ~ Brooke Williams, Encountering Dragonfly

The greatest story is that all life is one. ~ Carl Safina, Beyond Words

Recently, Brooke Williams, author of the new book Encountering Dragonfly, joined Mothering Nature to reflect on the power of Embracing the Enchantment of Nature. That initial conversation deepened and there was more to the story.

As I noted in our first conversation:

As it turns out, and in the synchronistic way Brooke now talks about routinely, he was scheduled to visit a nearby venue. And he’d be speaking alongside his beloved life partner, the distinguished nature writer Terry Tempest Williams. Terry, author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (1991), brought her own warm magic. The two together embodied an extraordinary collaborative force of wisdom we don't see every day.

Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams speak to a gathering at FinnRiver.

Source: Photo by Rachel Clark

The venue was FinnRiver: a lush farm and cidery nestled in the Olympic Peninsula’s fertile Chimacum Valley, and one of the more enchanting places I know. An organic farm, orchard, and cidery, FinnRiver is a farm-to-table haven that brings community together for a feast of music and performers, dancing, bounties of local foods, artists and makers, knitting and reading circles, and farm-grown ciders on tap. It’s a valley still fed by an active salmon stream, all of it nestled on the traditional and current territories of the S’Klallam and Chemakum tribes.

What’s more, Brooke’s book is published by the Olympic Peninsula’s own, Uphill Books, a small press honoring movement as “a lens through which to observe and understand ourselves and the world around us. It is also a mode for addressing our problems… and that movement is essential to humans.”

Brooke’s journey to his new book was about movement of all kinds: for him, for the dragonflies who brought his re-enchantment, for our own culture, and more.

So, I had to agree with Brooke’s reflections as he began to speak: that sharing this particular book, from this particular press, at this particular location, at this particular time, was a marvel of enchantment! Plus, the sense of local strength, solidarity, care and stewardship of the land, and community was astonishing. The commonwealth hummed with harmony. Re-enchantment was afoot!

Here then, is a follow-up post with more thoughts from Brooke on how we can re-enchant our lives... and the world:

Rachel Clark: What are the key messages in Encountering Dragonfly? Why are they timely now and how can people cultivate their own re-enchantment(s)?

Author and conservationist Brooke Williams

Source: Brooke Williams: Used with permission

Brooke Williams: Generally, the key messages contribute to what I call re-enchantment:

1. Synchronicity, not coincidence: The occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events probably means our unconscious has information for us.
2. Subject not object: Something to interact with, learn from, rather than to manipulate and use.
3. Natural history as truth learning: Becoming comfortable with the force of evolution, the brilliance of natural history, may be as close as we’re capable of getting to pure truth. But then…
4. The limits of science in describing actual reality: Gödel’s incompleteness theorem – just because something cannot be proven by scientific experimentation and explanation does not mean that it isn’t true.
5. Active not passive attention: These days, our flaccid attention is for sale to the highest bidder who can manipulate us for whatever purpose. Active attention is looking out for signals from the wild world, guiding us to safety and success. A wise person once wrote “the hunter knows only one thing—that he does not know what will happen next.”

RC: How do your book’s messages fit into the larger dynamic of humans’ relationship with the natural world during this era of extreme global change? Can what you learned help shift our understanding and actions towards harmony with the natural world?

BW: I believe that by learning that we modern humans are evolutionary beings, one species among many, and finding that evolutionary spark that glows deep in the middle of all of us, we will know exactly how the planet might make the best use of us. It has always been this way.

Raven sculpture holding glowing spark at FinnRIver

Source: Photo by Rachel Clark

RC: How was/is Terry part of your journey into imaginal ecologies?

BW: She grew up with a grandmother who instilled these ideas so deeply in her that modernity/adulthood has had less affect (on her) than most Americans. She’s so comfortable with one foot solidly in ordinary reality and one in – call it what you will – the non-ordinary, other world.

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RC: Do you have concerns about how the new administration may impact the natural world? What about the potential for re-enchantment described in your book?

BW: They hate anything about the natural world that they can’t objectify and commodify. Simply put, they are anti-life, whereas the wild world is nothing if not life affirming.

RC: You refer to a quote from the writer William Kitteridge as a lifelong guidepost. The quote is as follows:

“We live in bodies that are largely unchanged since the Pleistocene, trying to make them work in a world which is vastly different from the one for which evolution designed us. Perhaps acknowledging this is a big step toward solving some of our current problems.”

Mothering Nature’s premise is that humanity can unleash a new era of harmony on Earth in which we honor and work with natural systems rather than against them. For you, how does this vision relate to the Kittridge quote?

Blue-eyed darner dragonfly with Brooke Williams

Source: Brooke Williams / Used with permission

BW: “Natural systems” is one way to describe “the world for which evolution designed us.” Our ancestors, going back to our earliest beginnings, not only thrived in natural systems, but lived as an integral part of natural systems. Which may be the ultimate harmony.

RC: Can you tell us a little about why this is the “one story” you are called to tell over and over again?

BW: I think it goes back a long way to me feeling so at home in the wild world — mainly running in the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City and wandering among the different ancient dwelling sights in southern Utah — that I wondered why… and decided that being active in wild places was as close as we now get to our evolutionary lives. Which made me wonder if in fact our success as a species has always depended on this, so perhaps it still does.

***

Thank you, Brooke, for your insights into how we can re-enchant our lives and world. Windows to re-enchantment may appear as a thousand different things for a thousand different people. From the tiniest dragonfly in a dream to what Terry Tempest Williams said to her beloved, Brooke, at the conclusion of their talk: You are the re-enchantment for me.

Thank you for reading. May you find your own re-enchantments. And may they find you.